Abyss (32 page)

Leia frowned. Obviously, a BeamStreak was the last vehicle a tourist staying at the Krabbis Inn was likely to rent. But anyone hoping to use the hostel to spy on activities inside the loading dock would be frustrated by the mirrfield’s reflective exterior—unless they had one of the new PsiCor “wallscope” surveillance packages being developed for military intelligence. It seemed unthinkable that Daala would put such a top-secret espionage asset in the hands of a domestic security squad watching
Jedi
. But lately, the unthinkable had been happening a
lot
. Just a year earlier, who would have believed that a pair of Jedi Knights would be hanging in carbonite inside a government building? Or that a Galactic Alliance Chief of State would view the Jedi Order as a threat to the same society it had served so faithfully since its very inception?

“Some days, I really miss running the government myself,” Leia groused. “Who do you think they are? GAS?”

Han thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t be.” He hitched a thumb toward the rear of the loading dock, where R2-D2 and C-3PO stood at a main computer access portal, then added, “Not if Shortcircuit’s comm intercepts are right. Daala is worried about Jaina busting Valin and Jysella out of her secret prison, so she’s called everyone back to stand watch around the place.”

“Jaina
does
have a gift for making people nervous,” Leia said, feeling a flush of pride. “She takes after her father that way.”

Han’s expression darkened and, without responding, he turned back toward the mirrfield. He was still furious with Jaina for keeping Jag’s secret, and he was even more upset with Jag for not telling them about the Mandalorians in the first place. Truthfully, Leia was still angry, too. The difference was, Leia actually felt some sympathy for her daughter—perhaps because she herself had once been torn between her loyalty to the Rebellion and her love for a man who did not always share her loyalties. Fortunately Han was the kind of man who always put friends first, so his own loyalties had gradually grown close enough to Leia’s for them to make a life together.

But that wasn’t going to happen with Jag. The core of his being was built around honor and duty, and his duty now lay with the Imperial Remnant. To ask him to turn his back on
that
would be to ask him to stop being Jagged Fel. So if he and Jaina were going to make a life together, it would have to be
her
loyalties that grew closer to Jag’s—and
that
possibility, Leia suspected, was what really frightened Han: that Jaina might choose Jagged Fel and the Imperial Remnant over her parents and the Jedi.

Leia took Han’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Whatever Jaina does, you know she’s going to be okay.”

Han continued to look out toward the Krabbis’s blinking red sign. “ ’Course she is—it’s
them
I’m worried about.” He pointed at the BeamStreaks parked on the hostel’s roof. “A GAS squad would know better than to bring those things down here. Gotta be someone from offworld.”

Leia’s stomach sank. “The Mandos already?”

“That’s my guess,” Han nodded. “Probably an advance team. If Daala wants to send commandos in after the crazies—er, patients—they’d try for some reconnaissance. I know
I
would.”

“
That’s
going to complicate things,” Leia said. The whole reason they were sneaking the patients out of the Temple was to put them out of Daala’s reach on Shedu Maad. “But we can’t wait. Things are only going to grow more difficult.”

“No kidding,” Han said. “But even if it
is
a recon team, I don’t see them causing us a problem.”

“I’d like to be sure about that,” Leia said.

She glanced toward the back of the docks, where Tekli, Raynar, and half a dozen other Jedi Knights were escorting Bazel Warv’s hulking green bulk toward the FloatVan. Because of the Ramoan’s near-fatal reaction to being tranquilized the last time, Tekli had switched to Force hypnosis and a gentler benzodi-class drug to put him into a state of anxiety-free obedience. So far, it seemed to be working; he had lumbered all the way down from the Asylum Block without complaining about his chains.

Still, no one seemed to be taking any chances with the powerful Ramoan. The group was flanked on one side by Jaden Korr and on the other by a dark-haired Jedi Knight who was as strong of spirit as he was in the Force, a cheerful young man by the name Avinoam Arelis. Both were pulling hoverdollies bearing potted olbio trees and ysalamiri. The last thing anyone wanted was Bazel using the Force to counteract his drugs.

Leia caught Tekli’s eye, then called, “If you have everything under control, Han and I need to check on something outside.”

The little Chadra-Fan nodded and waved them on, calling, “Feel free. Barv is doing very well.”

“So far,”
Han muttered under his breath. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t have put him in stasis in his cell like the others.”

“Two words.” Leia took his hand and started for a small hatch in the wall next to the vehicle exit.
“The door.”

“We could have knocked out a wall,” Han said. “I’m pretty good with a cutting torch.”

Leia smiled.
“Coward.”

“It’s called
experience
, dear,” Han said. They reached the door, and he palmed the slap-pad next to it. “You can only punch a rancor’s nose so many times before you realize there’s got to be a better way.”

The door slid open, and Han waved Leia out onto a durasteel pedestrian balcony. This far down, the air was damp and foul. A constant stream of cargo vehicles was floating past in the transit lanes, located
both a few meters above and a few meters below the portal level where they were standing. Across from their balcony, the silver BeamStreaks sat gleaming in the artificial light of the Krabbis Inn’s rooftop lot. Both were parked so they had an unobstructed path straight out the gate.

Leia moved to the edge of the balcony, where a cramped set of stairs climbed into the aphotic murk of the gargantuan superstructure that supported Fellowship Plaza’s sunny expanse. After a few steps, she finally felt her connection with the Force return. Han followed her, peering over the railing, his eyes tracing the staircase’s zigzagging descent into the abyssal depths of Coruscant’s undercity.

“Okay, I give up,” he said. “Why are we out here taking in the Hutt-belch air? We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

“Bear with me—this won’t take long.” Leia opened herself to the Force and immediately felt the cold prickle of someone watching her. “You were right about those BeamStreaks.
Someone’s
using the Krabbis as an observation post.”

“And that’s a problem
why
?” Han turned his back to the hostel to prevent any possibility of eavesdropping by way of lip-reading or parabolic microphone. “All they’re going to see is a FloatVan leaving a loading dock.”

Leia turned to face Han’s side, putting her shoulder between her own mouth and any eavesdroppers in the Krabbis. “Unless they’ve got one of those PsiCor wallscopes Senator Trebek told the Masters about.”

“How would they get one of those?” Han demanded. “Even Fleet Command hasn’t seen one yet.”

Leia stepped back so she could see Han’s face, then looked him in the eye and waited. After a moment, he shook his head.

“No way,” he said. “That’s real off-the-budget stuff. Her own Justice Center would charge her with treason if she put it in the hands of a bunch of Mandos—or even a GAS squad. No way Daala is going to risk that.”

“You don’t think so?” Leia asked. “Then why would a reconnaissance team set up across from a mirrfield? It doesn’t make sense, unless they have a way to see through it. They could even see through the van walls when it pulls out.”

Han let out a disgusted groan. “Sometimes I hate it when you start getting logical.” He snuck a peek across the skylane at the BeamStreaks, then turned back toward the wall and shook his head in resignation. “But we’ve got to know for sure. No sense getting all worked up if it’s just a couple of dirtscratchers with a big budget and a pair of macrobinoculars.”

“No argument here,” Leia said. “Any ideas?”

Han thought for a moment, then took her hand. “As a matter of fact, yeah.”

He led her back toward the loading dock. She felt a sudden severing as she entered the ysalamiri’s Force void, but instead of thumbing the security pad next to the door, Han opened the safety gate at the end of the balcony. Still holding her hand, he led the way out onto the narrow catwalk that serviced the approach lights and guidance sensors arrayed around the edge of the entrance portal. As they passed in front of the mirrfield, their reflections appeared beside them, their hair standing on end with static discharge, their images wavering and slightly blurred.

Keeping one eye on their reflections and the other on his footing, Han led them to within a few meters of the catwalk’s mid-point, then suddenly stopped and cursed under his breath. A faint shadow had suddenly begun to limn one side of their reflections, and the image of the Krabbis’s blinking red sign had grown a couple of shades paler.

“What do you think?” Han asked. “Look like we’re standing in a photonic spray to you?”

“It’s a definite possibility.” Leia pulled the lightsaber off her belt and pointed the blade emitter over their heads. “But it always pays to be sure.”

She thumbed the activation switch, and the blade sizzled to life, bright and blinding in the under-plaza gloom. But instead of a blazing reflection, all the mirrfield showed was a transparent crevice. Through it, she could see Bazel Warv slowly lumbering up the FloatVan’s ramp, his beady eyes watching her and Han from beneath his deeply furrowed green brow. Deciding the last thing she needed to do at the moment was give the huge Ramoan a reason to panic, she quickly deactivated her lightsaber and turned to Han.

“Okay, I’m sure,” she said. “Whoever they are, they know what’s going on in there.”

Han nodded. “
Something
is interfering with the reflective overlay, that’s for sure. But if it’s any consolation, unless PsiCor got the flash-damping fixed, the poor ruk who was looking through their scope just now is going to need a new set of retinas.”

“Remind me to send him a box of bomb-bons,” Leia said. She raced back toward the balcony. “Come on. We need to get our patients out of there
now
, before Daala realizes Jaina is a diversion.”

“Right behind you,” Han said, pounding along at her heels. “The first thing we need to do is take out those BeamStreaks.”

“And every other speeder on that rooftop,” Leia agreed. “They’re going to want to follow us, and they won’t hesitate to steal something.”

Leia reached the balcony and continued toward the stairs at the other end, but Han stopped long enough to place his thumb over the security pad next to the door. She heard the door slide open, then Han calling to the Jedi Knights inside.

“Jaden, Avinoam, we need backup! Everyone else, get that crate fired up and out of here. We’ve got peepers across the way.”

By the time he had finished, Leia was bounding up the stairs toward the pedbridge three levels above. She was in contact with the Force again, and she could feel waves of ire and pain rolling toward them from the Krabbis hostel. It was impossible to tell from their presences whether they were Mandalorians, but there seemed to be about half a dozen of them, all relatively calm and focused on the task at hand.

When Han started to pound up the stairs behind her, Leia paused long enough to look down and give him a situation report. “I feel about six to eight of them, one in pain.”

“The one that got blinded,” Han surmised. He was taking the stairs two at time, coming fast—even for a man who wasn’t in his seventies. “Are they on the move?”

“Hard to …” Leia let her reply trail off as a cold chill of danger sense blossomed between her shoulder blades, then yelled, “Take cover!”

She threw herself flat against the stairs, at the same time glancing down to make sure Han was doing the same.

Leia found him already back down on the balcony, swinging around behind the staircase with his old DL-44 blaster pistol in hand. A trio of loud
krumph
s sounded from the Krabbis as a series of charges blew out three of the inn’s top-story viewports, then a flurry of colored bolts began to ring and ping off the durasteel around her, filling the air with the acrid stench of molten metal.

“What the blazes?”
Han yelled. “They’re
firing
at us!”

“That’s what Mandalorians
do
, dear,” Leia called. “Cover me!”

“Cover
you?” Han immediately began to fire across the hoverlane, dribbling bolts back through the deluge pouring out of the Krabbis’s freshly shattered viewports. “Are you crazy?”

“I married
you
, didn’t I?”

Leia ignited her lightsaber, then sprang up and began to ascend the stairs two and three at a time. She hung her arm over the safety rail and wielded her weapon in one hand, her wrist swiveling and pivoting as her blade windmilled back and forth, deflecting bolts.

Leia had barely reached the top of the stairs when she sensed a new danger and looked across the skylane to see the coil-wrapped barrel of a magrifle protruding through one of shattered viewports. She made a slapping motion with her free hand, and the weapon came free of the gloved hands holding it, then went flying along the face of the building. In the next heartbeat she used the Force to grab hold of one of the empty hands, then jerked a figure in red Mandalorian armor out through the viewport and sent him tumbling down through the skylane into the dark chasm beyond.

Leia reached the pedbridge and started across the traffic-filled abyss toward the Krabbis. She was now several stories above its rooftop parking lot. The durasteel decking and side panels of the pedbridge were shielding her, preventing the snipers with a nearly impossible firing angle. For the first half a dozen steps, she could scarcely bring herself to believe that they had really opened fire. Though gloomy, the freight lanes beneath Fellowship Plaza were hardly the undercity. A firefight directly outside the Jedi Temple was going to draw instant attention from a lot more than the usual law enforcement agencies.